Literary Luminary pages 1-40

“What would you do if I died?

If you died I would want to die too.

So you could be with me?

Yes. So I could be with you.

Okay.” (pg. 11).

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (pg. 12).

“He held the boy close to him. So thin. My heart, he said. My heart. But he knew that if he were a good father still it might well be as she had said. That the boy was all that stood between him and death.” (pg. 29).

Discussion Leader reading 2

What do you think the man means when he says that there are no more states?

Why do you think there were lots of people in a trailer?

Why does the man wish he still has his wife in his life?

The wife says, “sooner or later they will catch us and kill us.” Do you think the man and his son have been running from the same people? Was this group of people a known threat to all survivors?

What do you think the woman means when he says, “My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born…”?

Did you find any quotes that help explain how much the man cares for his son?

Vocab- reading 3

Viaduct

Noose

Trellis

Idiom

Frieze

Woad

Runic

Truncheoned

Tableau

Bedlam

Connector pgs. 100-150

            Pg. 114- “I won’t leave you, he whispered. I won’t ever leave you. Do you understand?” Do you think that in our society, parents are this close to their kids. Why or why not?

Nathan: No, b/c they’re too caught up in everyday things. The man only has one reason for living, and that is to take care of his kid. He doesn’t have to pay taxes, go to work and pay bills.

Tyler: Some parents, not all parents are the same. Some are really close to their children, others aren’t. In a situation like this, parents definitely have to be close to their kids.

Literary Luminary 150-200

“Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien.” (pg. 153). What does this mean?

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.” (pg. 169).

“I couldn’t trust you with it. To do something with it, I don’t want anybody talking about me. To say where I was or what I said when I was there.” (pg. 171). Why is he so worried about people knowing his name? Did he have a past experience where people tracked him down?

“You don’t care if it hurts his feelings?

Will it hurt his feelings?

No. That’s not why he did it.

Why did he do it?

He looked over at the boy and he looked at the old man. You wouldn’t understand, he said. I’m not sure I do.” (pg. 173). ?!?!?!?!

“Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.” (pg. 196). ???

Connector 200-251

When the man and boy had all of their things stolen from them, they set out on a hunt for the person who took their belongings. The man threatened him with a gun. Nowadays, if someone did that they’d be thrown in jail. This shows how people have to take care of themselves in this new world. Also, the man talks about how he won’t let his kid go into the darkness alone. In the world now, because we don’t have conditions like theirs, we have to let our loved ones go. Like when they’re sick in a hospital, we know that people have done everything they can, but if the boy dies I feel like the man will blame himself for not doing enough to keep his kid alive.